For five years now, the Academy of Richmond County Hall of Fame has been inducting alumni, faculty and administrators. This year’s group includes 11 new members whose lives had an impact on others from Georgia to Hollywood, Indonesia, Vietnam, the Titan missile silos and the battlefields of World War II. All have been outstanding. This is the story of one.

Eighty cadets graduated from the Academy of Richmond County on June 11, 1929. Only two years earlier the school had moved from its Telfair Street home of over 200 years to its spacious new building on the drained swampland at the bottom of the “Hill.” These young men had begun high school in one place and finished in another. One of those cadets graduating at the academy auditorium that night was young Benjamin Neely Plumb, whose contribution to the evening’s ceremony was the class prophecy and whose contribution to the world were a bevy of popular musical recordings and his daughter, the well-known Brady Bunch actress Eve Plumb who played Jan Brady.

Neely Plumb’s Augusta roots were deep. His ancestors on multiple lines had been contributing members of the community. On his mother’s side, he was a direct descendent of Augusta inventor William Longstreet, whose attempt to use steam to power a boat on the Savannah River had preceded Robert Fulton’s Clermont on the Hudson. Longstreet’s son Gilbert had married into the prominent Eve family when he wed Martha Henrietta Eve, daughter of Oswell Eve.  That gentleman had been a mariner in the Revolutionary Era who settled in Augusta around 1800, lived at Goodale for a time and developed Frog Hall plantation south of the city. In that family’s Cottage Cemetery now rest many of Augusta’s prominent leaders including Joseph Adams Eve, one of the early founders of the Medical College of Georgia.

Neely’s grandfather Benjamin Neely, whose name he bore, had been a leader in education in Augusta. Coming here after graduating from the College of Charleston, Benjamin Neely had become a teacher at the Academy of Richmond County in the antebellum period. After serving the Confederacy in the Civil War, he returned to Augusta to teach, founding a school for girls in 1866 that became Tubman High School. Benjamin Neely and his wife Henrietta Eve Carmichael Neely were parents of Hannah Longstreet Neely, Neely Plumb’s mother. Hannah’s brother, Benjamin Neely Plumb’s uncle, was Frank Henry Neely, a Georgia Tech engineer, who became chairman of the Board of Atlanta’s well-known Rich’s Corporation and a major contributor to Atlanta’s growth. Frank had been born in the “Cottage House” on the old Eve family land. It was probably Uncle Frank’s influence that sent Neely and his brother William to Georgia Tech after graduation from Richmond Academy.

In 1900 Hannah had married William A. Plumb, a widower with two daughters by his first wife, Katherine Boardman. William was the son of Alonzo F. and Mary Frances Plumb and William’s sister Nellie married Hollis C. Boardman, founder of the company that became Boardman Oil. Hannah and William had four children, two daughters and two sons, with Neely being the youngest.

In spite of his many family connections, Neely did not have a privileged childhood. He was only 4 years old when his father William, a salesman with Phinizy & Company, died in December 1916. Augusta was just beginning to rebuild from the disastrous fire that destroyed over 30 blocks of downtown that year. The Plumb’s Telfair Street home had escaped the conflagration by a block and a half.

Neely may have had childhood memories of World War I, as soldiers from Augusta left for European battlefields and others from throughout the country came to train at Camp Hancock.In 1918 the Plumb children would have been out of school for much of the fall when the quarantine to stop the spread of the Spanish Flu epidemic closed all local institutions.

Like many widows, Hannah had a family to support so she went to work. She became the manager of The Tea Shop, a position she continued until the mid-1920s when daughters Bessie and Mary took over the business. Stepdaughter Katherine, then 25 years old, was still at home and undoubtedly aiding Hannah with the younger children as well as helping support the family financially by working as a stenographer until her marriage.

In 1920 Hannah and the children were still living in the family home in the 300 block of Telfair but by the mid-1920s they had become lodgers in the home of their elderly neighbor next door. By 1929 the Plumb women were no longer at the Tea Shop, which did not survive the Depression. Bessie married but she and her husband lived with the family and Bessie took work as a stenographer. Throughout these years young Neely and his brother William went to nearby Houghton School and on to Richmond Academy in the mid-1920s.

Hannah tried to give her children a normal childhood. At the age of 10 Neely was part of the program of the Junior Missionary Society of St. John’s United Methodist Church and was active in the YMCA. In 1924 he was one of Augusta’s boys who belonged to the Junior Gym class at the Y. Neely,  along with his friend Louis Hildebrandt, whose family owned the still-popular grocery store on 6th Street, were on Team B—the Beetles. The next year Neely was Captain of the Boys Y Division 3.

At Houghton School in June 1925, his last year there before entering ARC for high school, Neely was recognized with honors in geography.  In 1928 he was able to go to camp at Caesar’s Head, S.C.

When Neely and his older brother William became interested in music is not clear, but Frederick Plumb was a music teacher and composer and may have taught the young boys. Neely was still in high school when he and William were playing with the band of the Augusta Lodge of the Fraternal Order of Eagles, so they must have been playing from a young age.

After graduation from ARC that June night in 1929, Neely spent some time at the Junior College of Augusta, playing the soprano sax in the school’s orchestra before leaving for Georgia Tech. A band known as the Georgia Tech Ramblers came to Augusta in May 1932 to play for the Augusta Demolay and according to The Augusta Chronicle, Augusta had two members of this “talented musical group”—Neely and his brother William.

While at Tech Neely worked for WSB (Welcome South, Brother) radio, the first station in the city and state. Founded by the Atlanta Journal, WSB began operating in March 1922.  By the time Neely joined them, the station had moved to the top of the Atlanta Biltmore Hotel and become affiliated with the National Broadcasting Company.

After graduating from Tech, Neely’s love for music steered him out of a career in engineering. The risk of a career in music, a decision perhaps made when he looked out over the city of Atlanta from atop the Biltmore, proved to be a worth it. In 1954The Augusta Chronicle “bragged a bit” when it reminded the community that the Junior College once had an orchestra that included Neely Plumb, who “went on to climb the ladder of success in the musical world.”

Music took both Plumb brothers away from Augusta permanently. By the time Neely was best man in brother William’s Chicago wedding in 1937, only sister Bessie and her husband Frank Conlon lived in their hometown. They continued to care for Hannah until her death in 1958. Neely is listed in the wedding announcement of his brother as “formerly of Augusta.” Neely studied music in Chicago and Los Angeles and began playing with popular bands and orchestras of the day.

By the time of his own marriage in Los Angeles in March 1939, Neely Plumb was already making a name for himself. His bride was Flora June Dobry of Oklahoma City, a ballet dancer and actress, eight years his junior. The couple set sail from Los Angeles after the wedding and honeymooned in Honolulu where Neely was working with the Anson Weeks Band, a popular West Coast group in the big band era.  A couple of months later the newlyweds returned to Los Angeles and made a home in Hollywood. He went on to play sax and sometimes clarinet with Artie Shaw, Ray Noble and others of the big band era. He worked with Judy Garland, Lena Horne and Ray Coniff. Plumb’s musicianship can still be heard on original recordings as well as on retrospective CDs such as “Jazz from Atlanta, 1923-1928,” or “Best of the War Years.”

For five years Plumb was the recording producer for the west coast division of RCA.  In 1963 he became manager of A & R for RCA on the West Coast. He went on the produce the soundtracks for some of the major motion pictures of the middle 20th century—Sound of Music, True Grit, Bye Bye Birdie, the Good Bad and Ugly, In Cold Blood, The Harrod Experiment, She Came to the Valley, to name some of the best known. After an independent deal with Capitol Records, he produced the soundtrack for Franco Zefferilli’s Romeo and Julietand soundtrack albums for Taxi Driver and Three Days of the Condor. He had five gold records for soundtrack albums. He was also an arranger, conductor and musician who worked with many acts in several genres, including Artie Shaw, Jefferson Airplane and Glenn Yarborough. Plumb was the arranger and producer on the novelty pop song of Sheb Wooley that went to number one—“Purple People Eater.” A quick google shows that his discography is extensive.

Neely and Flora Plumb had four children—son Benjamin, and daughters Flora, Eve and Catherine.  Daughter Flora began her acting career in 1968 with a small part in the television show Wild Wild West and went on to have appearances in others shows including Marcus Welby, MD and Lou Grant.

Her sister Eve, 14 years younger, became so well-known to audiences throughout the country, that she became the most recognizable member of the Plumb family. Beginning at the age of 6 in television commercials and appearances on shows such as The Virginian, The Big Valley and Lassie, Eve became a television star when she began appearing at age 11 as Jan, the middle daughter, on the popular The Brady Brunch. While the show only ran from 1969 to 1974, it has continued to run in syndication for years, still drawing viewers. Eve Plumb also worked in other television shows and movies, including Little Women. More recently she has done theater and has been a visual artist for over 20 years.

Neely and Flora had been married over 55 years when Flora died in 1995. Neely died one month short of his 88th birthday five years later in October 2000. Today he and Flora lie next to each other in a Hollywood cemetery under a headstone with the epitaph “Eternal Love.” Richmond Academy has produced some remarkable folks over the years; Neely Plumb is one and certainly deserves this recognition from his alma mater.

FOR YEARS Augustans have driven along Berckmans Road and now Augusta National Club members and some lucky patrons will enjoy hospitality in the elegant Berckmans Place on the grounds. While the history of those rolling hills as Fruitland Nursery is well-known, less familiar are the personal stories of this remarkable immigrant family whose lives not only left the legacy of this beautiful place but also affected horticulture throughout much of the world. 

Louis Mathieu Eduoard Berckmans was born in 1801 in Lierre, Belgium, a small town between Brussels and Antwerp, known for lacemaking, textiles and the crafting of musical instruments. His coming of age experience included the Napoleonic Wars, the consolidation of his country with Holland following the Congress of Vienna in 1815 and the subsequent unrest and eventual secession of Belgium years later. A member of the lesser nobility, he was well-educated, spoke French and German, enjoyed and played music, and created art. Trained as a physician, he also loved the natural world and became well-known in his homeland as a talented horticulturist. 

In the 1820s, he married the love of his life, Marie Gaudens. More than 40 years after her death he would remark to friends, “My first wife…was an angel from heaven, God bless her.” In October 1830 Marie gave birth to a son, Prosper Jules Alphonse, and died soon after. Prosper became Louis’s “dear boy,” the apple of his eye. Four years later Louis remarried Holland-born Elizabeth Charlotte Arnoldine Rubens who gave him a second son, Emile, in 1837. According to the Smithsonian, Prosper was educated in France in horticulture and at age 17 returned to his father’s estates while studying at the Botanical Gardens in Brussels.

At age 20, with his father’s blessing, Prosper sailed to the United States to search for a good home for the family. There he travelled extensively, including a sojourn in Georgia to examine Rome, where a colony of Belgian expatriates had already settled. In July 1851, he returned North for the arrival from Belgium of his stepmother, younger half-brother and father, who had brought horticultural specimens from the homeland. 

In spite of his son’s enthusiasm for Georgia, the elder Berckmans decided to settle in Plainfield, N.J., where he and Prosper began a nursery to cultivate pears and experiment with other plants. The family was well-received and met some American luminaries. New Yorker Andrew Jackson Downing, often considered the father of American landscape, and author of the 1845 Fruit and Fruit Trees of America, sought out Louis Berckmans who he declared would “be a great acquisition in the society of American fruit growers and pomologists…. We rejoice that such a man has settled among us.” Downing’s unfortunate death in July 1852 cut short what might have been a long and productive relationship. By 1856 Dr. Berckmans was prominent enough that he was asked to  judge in the United States Agricultural Exhibit. In New Jersey, Prosper married New Jersey-born Mary Craig, who in 1857 gave birth to the first of three sons, Louis Alphonse. 

After several New Jersey winters, the South’s climate began to beckon. In 1857 Dr. Berckmans bought almost 145 acres on the south side of Washington Road and dubbed it Pearmont. To the west was the Fruitland Nursery property of Dennis Redmond who, like Dr. Berckmans, was an immigrant. Born in Ireland, Redmond had settled in Utica, N.Y. Hired by Daniel Lee, a fellow New Yorker who had moved to Augusta to become editor of the Southern Cultivator, Redmond became first a correspondent, then assistant editor, for the magazine. Both Lee and Redmond were proponents of agricultural reform in the South, including fruit cultivation, which they promoted in the pages of their publication. 

Redmond’s property had been the orchard portion of James Coleman’s Bedford Nursery. As early as 1853 Redmond had begun advertising in The Augusta Chronicle the sale of fruit, fowls and trees from Bedford Nursery. And in 1854 he purchased 315 acres that included the Bedford orchard and gave the nursery the name Fruitland. In 1858 Louis Berckman purchased Fruitland from Redmond and combined it with Pearmont. Redmond then bought the land to the east of Pearmont naming it Vineland for the vineyards he began to cultivate there. (For an interesting analysis of Fruitland and Redmond, readers might enjoy an article by Dr. Philip Herrington, Augusta native and history professor at James Madison University, in the November 2012 issue of the Journal of Southern History.)

Dr. Berckmans and Prosper’s young family moved to Augusta in 1857 with Emile following in 1858. Louis’s wife Elizabeth never joined him in Augusta, staying in Plainfield where son Emile later returned. Elizabeth, along with an Irish servant named Anna, appeared in the 1860 census living with $20,000 in real estate and $3,000 in personal property. In 1863 Emile, living in Plainfield, registered for the U.S. Army draft enacted in that year. Emile evidently remained in the North for life. In 1870 he married a New Jersey girl named Elizabeth, a fellow music teacher. In the Plainfield city directory of 1883, his occupation was still music teacher. 

 ”In 1858-59 the first ads for the Descriptive Catalogue of Fruit and Ornamental Trees, Shrubs, Vines, Roses, Evergreens, Hedge Plants, &c., cultivated and for sale at Fruitland Nursery in Augusta, Ga., by P. J. Berckmans & Company” began appearing. The catalog could be obtained at Berckmans or at Mr. V. LaTaste’s Grocery Store in town. By 1860 Prosper appeared in the census with real estate worth $18,000 and a personal estate valued at $8,000. In addition to his father, wife and son, the household included Joseph Tice, a laborer from Belgium; Peter Benne, a nurseryman from France; Albert Coles, a clerk from New Jersey; and Rose Kelly a servant from Ireland. They were building one of the largest and most successful nurseries in the South. During the Civil War, they provided vegetables and fruits for the Confederacy and donated to the mayor’s charity for wounded soldiers. Prosper and Mary added two more sons to their family—Robert Craig, born in 1864, and Prosper Julius Alphonse Jr., born in 1866. 

During the Civil War they provided vegetables and fruits for the Confederacy…

In 1870 Dr. Louis M.E. Berckmans left the business in the capable hands of his son and, upon the invitation of Georgia author and newspaper columnist Charles Smith, better known as Bill Arp, he moved to Rome, Ga., where he lived on Horse Leg Mountain, which he nicknamed Mt. Alto. In a fascinating article on Rome’s Belgian colony in 1977, author Bernice Couey Bishop described his contented life there. His home was a 12- by 15-foot cabin of stone and wood, which he termed his “castle,” surrounded by a wall and terraces of flowers. On the hillside he planted orchards that fed him on pears, apples, peaches, plums and cherries. Inside the cozy home, books of the classics paintings of heroes lined the walls. There he cooked for himself, mainly vegetables and fruits, rice and grits. According to the article, the sounds of his violin often reverberated through the mountainside. Du Drovided vegetables and fruits for the Confederacy…

Periodically he walked the four miles down the mountain to town where he occasionally accompanied some of the accomplished local pianists on his violin. His character is reflected in letters of advice to his grandsons, whom he urged to follow the example of their father Prosper for honorable careers: “not seeking for…ambitious aims but shaping your course so as to deserve the esteem of your fellow man.” Distinction, he cautioned, “too often converts to vanity…a man can be happy and more so by following a plain, honorable course than by glitter.” υ

On a visit to his beloved family 82- year-old Louis walked from Fruitland to downtown Augusta and back on December 6, 1883; he died the next day. Prosper buried him in Summerville Cemetery where he himself would one day rest.

After his father’s move to Rome, Prosper continued to operate the nursery, within a decade shipping catalogs throughout the region, nation and world. He served his profession well, founding the Georgia State Horticultural Society in 1876 and the Richmond County Agricultural Society in 1885, serving as president of each from its establishment until his death. In 1885-1886 he collected horticultural exhibits for the United States government for the New Orleans Exposition and the following year his peers elected him president of the American Pomological Society. For a number of years he presided over the editorial board of the Farmer and Gardener. In 1893 he gave the opening address at the Horticultural Congress held at the Chicago World’s Fair. A generous man, he also donated money and plantings to organizations and institutions such as the state mental institution in Milledgeville.

Having become a naturalized citizen, Berckmans took his civic responsibility seriously and participated in many community activities.

Having become a naturalized citizen in 1854, Berckmans took his civic responsibility seriously and participated in many community activities. In the 1870s he became president of the Cotton States Mechanical and Agricultural Fair Association and in 1888 a leading member of the board of Augusta’s National Exposition. Active in political affairs as well, he served as the manager of elections in his precinct of Richmond County, as a grand juror and as a delegate to the Congressional Convention. 

His sons lived and worked with him at Fruitland while growing up and acquiring their educations. He sent sons Robert and Allie (Prosper Julius Alphonse Jr.), whom the paper called “two of the brightest and most popular Augusta boys,” to the University of Georgia. They, in turn, along with older brother Louis, who became a known designer of golf courses and the gardens at Radio City Music Hall, would become active professionals and community members, carrying on their father’s work. 

In 1897 Prosper’s wife Mary Craig died after more than 40 years of marriage. The next year Prosper, by then more than 70 years old, married 38-year-old Edith Fromm Purdy of New York, the editor of a fashion magazine. They met when he was on a visit to relatives in New York. The couple lived in Augusta and spent summers up North. In fact, in the 1900 census Prosper was enumerated with his new wife in Essex, N.J.

In November 1910 Prosper J.A. Berckmans died after a long and productive life. At their first conference since the loss of their founder and long-time president, the Georgia State Horticultural Association dismissed their business agenda to pay tribute to their colleague and friend, whom one member said was the “greatest pomologist the South has ever seen.” Professor T. H. Hatten of the University of Georgia, whose campus landscape reflected Berckmans’s expertise, praised not only his “encyclopedic knowledge,” but his character: “His course was not that of the money-accumulating merchant but rather that of altruistic scientist who preferred the good of all before any considerations.” Although he was 80 when he died, Hatten said, “old age of the spirit was never his.”

In 1903 Prosper had rewritten his will leaving the bulk of the estate, both in New Jersey and Georgia, to his second wife, including all the couple’s horses, carriages and personal belongings, 100 shares of stock in the company and 200  acres of Fruitland, including the dwelling house and the greenhouses of the nursery. The deed, however, was subject to the lease of the nursery portion to P.J. Berckmans and Co. Nursery until 1918. The rest of the estate, including the remaining Fruitland property was left jointly to the three sons, who already had received the largest share of the moneys from their father’s own inheritance of “patrimonial estates in Belgium” in the 1890s. The three brothers continued to run P.J. Berckmans & Company with Louis as president, Robert as vice-president and Allie as secretary-treasurer until the company lease on Edith’s portion ended in 1918 when they left the business. 

In a few years, the new story of the estate as the Augusta National Golf Club began, with Louis and Allie both involved. It is fitting that the Augusta National keeps the name of the Berckmans family alive as a reminder of their remarkable legacy of beauty there and in landscapes throughout the world.    

Dr. Lee Ann Caldwell is an Augusta historian, author and director of the Center for Study of Georgia History at Augusta University.

DANIEL McHORTON was born in slavery sometime in the 1840s in Augusta, Ga. Hattie Maria Corrin was born in comfortable circumstances on October 23, 1864, in South Coventry, Conn. In the early 20th century, across the lines of race, gender and class, the lives of these two remarkable people intersected. The result made a difference for hundreds of African American children in Augusta for generations.

Emancipated in 1865, Daniel McHorton could read and write by the time he appeared in the 1870 census. Perhaps his former owners had given him the gift of literacy. After all, according to his story, he had protected the females and family property during the Civil War and made the shoes his owner’s son wore to the front. By 1870 Daniel had married Silvie and they were raising two unrelated children, the first of many they would take in. Daniel later explained that he and Silvie loved children, but never had any of their own. He was also by 1870 the owner of a 20-acre farm worth $400 on Butler Creek several miles from town.

Throughout his life he continued to work his farm and remained active in organizations for black farmers, including the state Colored Agricultural Association. A man of service, the 1873 board of education report showed that Daniel McHorton also taught school for African American children in his district. Active in the local Republican Party, he ran unsuccessfully for office in 1872. By 1884 he had become pastor of Spirit Creek Baptist Church, a position he held almost 30 years. υ

Hattie Marie Corrin spent her early years comfortably acquiring a private-school education. But the mid-1870s depression and the subsequent death of her father brought financial reversals to the family. She married Lester Lockwood, moving with him to Tacoma, Wash., where in 1892 their son Lester Corrin was born. When Corrin was only five, his father deserted them, leaving Hattie alone with a small child and no money. Divorcing Lester in 1897, she pulled herself together and travelled with a friend to Gold Rush territory in Alaska to open a hospital/hotel for sick and injured miners. Shipwrecked in a blizzard off the shore of Skagway, the women lost their entire investment in medicines and supplies, and almost lost their lives. The determined Hattie stayed in Alaska for a time supporting herself with various jobs. By 1901 she and Corrin appeared in the Canadian census. 

Will a Christian city like this allow these poor children to freeze to death for want of bedding?

Seeking a milder climate for her health, she settled eventually in California where she met and married the widowed Henry A. Strong, co-founder and first president of an exciting new business of the era—Eastman Kodak. With his own children grown, Henry adopted Corrin and the family settled in his home in Rochester, N.Y., where Eastman Kodak was headquartered. The Strongs had a happy marriage, but the trials of Hattie’s previous life had honed both her determination and her empathy for others in difficult circumstances.

In 1896 the Shiloh Baptist Association of African American Baptist Churches in the area, founded an orphanage in Augusta named for its first manager, Gad S. Johnson. In a time before financial safety nets, especially for African Americans, the need was great. Although Augusta had the Tuttle-Newton Home with its endowment for orphaned white children, African American children had no corresponding refuge and many “waifs” ended up in the streets. When Johnson’s controversial management of Tuttle-Newton ended and he left for Macon, the board turned to the respected Daniel McHorton to reorganize. With the new name of Shiloh Orphanage and well-known African American citizens, including A.R. Johnson and William J. White, on the board, Shiloh assured the public that this home would be properly run. Under McHorton’s management, the orphanage began operation in late 1899 with 12 children in a house on Sherman Street near Railroad Avenue. They started completely from scratch without even plates for the children’s food. By February 1900, there were 22 children at the home. McHorton sent an anguished cry to the community for help with the basics: “Will a Christian city like this allow these poor children to freeze to death for want of bedding?” He also solicited donations of wood, shingles and bricks to add some space. Black community members were doing what they could, but as McHorton pointed out, “our people are poor and therefore we appeal to our good white friends who are more able to help us.” It was a plea that he would repeat many times over the ensuing years. 

McHorton was enterprising and had no intention of relying solely on donations. In the fall of 1901 he sold a bale of cotton, which he and the by then 32 children had raised on vacant land near the house. His hard work and self-sacrificing conduct won the support of the newspaper. In May 1902 an editorial entitled “A Worthy Charity-Reverend Daniel McHorton’s Colored Orphanage” noted that the institution had not received the support that it deserved but predicted it would “as soon as fully understood by our people.” McHorton wanted to acquire four to five acres near the city on which to build needed structures and to cultivate the food and crops that would help them become self-sustaining. He also wanted the children to get an education in the basics and to acquire marketable skills. The article pointed out that he was managing on eight cents per child per day in addition to some donations of food. The Grand Jury responded by donating $5.50 and some merchants donated bricks and lumber with McHorton vowing to build when he had enough. “I can but promise,” he wrote, “to do all I can to make this home a credit to our city and people.” 

 By the summer of 1903, 51 children lived at the home with 12 on the waiting list. By fall the institution had made the first payment on new property in the suburb of Harrisonville. That season the children and staff of the institution had picked 7,000 pounds of cotton and 14,000 pounds of peas for area farmers to earn money. They had also planted more than five of their eight acres in vegetables for their own sustenance. In spite of this they asked both white and black churches to think of them “in this hour of need” for shoes and warm clothes for the oncoming winter.

Through fire, flood, depressions and wars, Shiloh survived until the 1970s…

By 1905 several older boys worked on McHorton’s farm on Spirit Creek to produce additional food for the many mouths the institution had to feed. On the orphanage grounds were the small buildings where the McHortons and children lived, some built by the boys. The boys had also built a blacksmith shop where they learned that trade and carpentry. The girls contributed by cultivating the gardens and sewing, washing and cooking. In spite of the hard work, the children were loved by Daniel and Sylvie who worked alongside them and did everything they could so the orphans “would know they were not forgotten.” One reporter from The Chronicle wrote in 1905 that when he saw the children gathered around Daniel, “I knew I had beheld a vision of the Good Shepherd.”

In 1904 the Shiloh Baptist Association bowed out, saying they could no longer sustain their support. Refusing to abandon their children, the McHortons soldiered on alone, continuing to work hard at being self-sustaining and cultivating the support of the Augusta community—black and white. They held open houses so the public could see firsthand both the hard work and the acute need. In a few years, as delinquent payments on the mortgage loomed, McHorton’s pleas became more desperate. In January 1908 The Augusta Chronicle opened a subscription list for people to rescue Shiloh. The debt owed was $2,700, but the owners were willing to be patient if they received a $500 payment. Throughout the month donations came in with names such as J.B. White, Landon Thomas, George Butler, Paine College, Planters Cotton Oil Co. and Cumming Grove Baptist Church appearing on the donor list. As a result the crisis was averted—at least until the next payment was due on the remaining $2,200. Meanwhile, the regular needs and expenses of the day-to-day operation of the orphanage made it difficult to accumulate any surplus.

The devastating flood of 1908 drained much of that year’s charity dollars, so by winter the orphanage, up against regular needs and another payment on the property, was again facing possible dissolution. Among the winter guests in Augusta at that time were Judge and Mrs. William Howard Taft, invited by their friends Landon and Minnie Thomas. In mid-January 1909, as the soon-to-be U.S. President prepared to leave Augusta, he accompanied Minnie on a visit to Shiloh. A month later he described his experience in a speech in New York: “I tried to be dignified…but I did need my handkerchief before I got out.” Taft sent a donation and a note of commendation, boosting the hope and morale of the McHortons. Perhaps more importantly, he aroused the interest of a charismatic Northern visitor.

The winter of 1908-1909 was the first time Henry and Hattie Strong had come to Augusta for the “season,” now that son Corrin was in college at Yale. After the Taft publicity, Hattie Strong inquired about Shiloh and Minnie Thomas took her to visit. Hattie said that after meeting Daniel McHorton and seeing the children, she couldn’t sleep. She sprang into action, determined not just to make the year’s mortgage payment, but to also eliminate the entire debt. In addition to her own donation, she prevailed upon  fellow tourists at the Bon Air, Hampton Terrace and in private homes in Summerville. One of the first to comply was John D. Rockefeller, who by that time rarely made personal donations, having established a foundation for his philanthropy. Minnie Thomas raised $200 at a children’s musical given at her home. Within one week $3,160 were raised, enough to pay off the mortgage and build a new school building.

 A grateful Shiloh hosted a praise service for the work that The Chronicle called “one woman’s winter in Augusta.” Held in front of the school house under construction, visitors from the Bon Air and Hampton Terrace, along with some of Augusta’s own, heard recitations from orphans Abraham Lincoln and Napoleon Bonaparte and delighted in the naming of the school—Strong Academy. A formal dedication of the completed structure took place that April and in August a portrait of Hattie Strong was hung. The Strongs continued to support the school with their efforts and finances. Henry became a member of the board and after his death in 1919, Hattie took his place.

Daniel McHorton died in May 1913. He and Silvie had raised almost 100 children at the time of his death.

Support also came from Augusta’s  African American community  as well as many of the town’s leading white citizens and organizations. The day-to-day operation of the home, without an endowment, remained a constant fundraising challenge for Daniel McHorton and his successors. Through fire, flood, depressions and wars, however, Shiloh survived until the 1970s when social service programs sent child care in other directions. The site, however, then got a new life as Shiloh Community Center under the energetic, self-sacrificing leadership of Mrs. Ruth Crawford. She and Daniel McHorton were kindred spirits.

Daniel McHorton died in May 1913. He and Silvie had raised almost 100  children at the time of his death. His work lived on for generations, for over the years hundreds of orphaned or neglected children found a caring home at Shiloh. Without the timely help of Hattie Strong, however, his best efforts may not have been enough. Hattie lived until 1950, devoting her life to philanthropy—supporting hospitals, educational institutions and social service organizations in the U.S., Europe, Asia and Africa. In 1928 she founded the Hattie M. Strong Foundation, which still operates to provide scholarships and grants to institutions training teachers. 

Hattie Strong would go on to donate buildings to many institutions including Peking University in China, Rollins College in Florida, the University of Rochester, Salem College in North Carolina, the YWCAs in Rochester and Washington D.C., and a hospital in France for disfigured veterans (for which she received the Legion of Honor). But Strong Academy at Shiloh Orphanage was her first effort, inspired by the compassion and unselfish dedication of Daniel McHorton—the legacy of them both.  

Dr. Lee Ann Caldwell is an Augusta historian, author and director of the Center for Study of Georgia History at Augusta University.

This article appears in the February-March 2016 issue of Augusta Magazine.

THE LATE 1800s were a time of great transformation in American society as invention, industrialization and urbanization accelerated following the Civil War. In urban areas the amenities of indoor plumbing, electricity and labor-saving devices improved life for many. Rapid urbanization and industrialization, however, also led to many problems and created a class of working poor. These two trends met in an interesting way. The challenges of industrialization and urbanization awakened a spirit among people of faith called the Social Gospel Movement, which called them to live out their creeds by helping the less fortunate. At the same time, amenities of urban life allowed middle and upper class women time to do just that. The resulting women’s club movement saw women founding organizations, not only for their own enjoyment and edification, but for helping their fellow human beings. In an era before any safety net—social security, housing or food assistance—these women’s organizations provided for those who were in need, were ill or disabled, were hungry or cold.  υ

One of these myriad new clubs was the International Order of the King’s Daughters, founded in New York when Methodist minister’s wife Margaret Bottome joined with nine friends in 1886 to found the King’s Daughters—a “circle” for self-improvement and service to others. Within 10 years, King’s Daughters had spread to 26 states, to Canada, most of Europe, Japan, China, Syria and India. Over the next 15 years these circles had founded more than 700 hospitals, refuges, homes for “incurables,” day nurseries, working girls’ homes and other benevolent institutions.

In May 1888 a notice in The Augusta Chronicle announced a meeting for ladies interested in organizing a circle of the King’s Daughters in Augusta. Once established, this band of King’s Daughters wasted no time. A month later they hosted a festival in the city park with proceeds going to help a family in “desperate need.” The organization grew quickly with additional circles organizing. Support came from all Christian churches and, even though the Daughters was a Christian organization, some of the most generous contributors were “Hebrew friends.” 

By the summer of 1889 the by-then nine circles opened a Women and Children’s Hospital at 1465 Broad St. in a frame house. This early first effort proved unsuccessful  when running even a small hospital proved to be expensive. Undaunted by this setback, the ladies immediately embarked on a new project to open a day nursery for very young children whose parents and older siblings worked 11-hour shifts in the textile factories. Augusta Factory President Stewart Phinizy donated a house opposite the mill’s office and, with the money left from the hospital fund, the King’s Daughters Day nursery began.

Over the years the King’s Daughters of Augusta performed many services for the poor, each circle choosing its own focus. For example, the Summerville Circle opened a Girls Home Club in Harrisburg to teach the teenaged girls who worked in the mills the arts of cooking, sewing and homemaking. The more services the Daughters performed, the more the organization grew and by the turn of the century there were 14 circles, each working to help those in need in its own way.

One of these was the Mizpah Circle headed by Catherine Rowland and Mary Warren. In 1895, they began paying the rent for several impoverished elderly women in the mill district. They decided that instead of rent, they would found a home where the lonely women could live together. For eight years, they planned, raised money and sought an appropriate location. In December of 1903, the first Mary Warren Home opened on upper Broad Street on a lot the city donated. Original plans to use the old upper police barracks donated by the city changed when Mary Warren died, leaving enough money in her will for a small new home, which was named in her memory. According to her obituary, Mrs. Warren lived a “life full of thought for others and her beautiful charities were dispensed in so unobtrusive a manner.” Well-known Augusta architect Lewis F. Goodrich donated architectural plans as well as his time to supervise the construction. Other citizens donated money for the project along with furnishings and household items. The home, which could hold five women including the matron, was open to all women regardless of creed. (In those days of Jim Crow, that open door policy did not, however, include women of color.) In 1904 donations allowed the addition of two rooms to accommodate two more ladies in need.

Ongoing support of the home and its “inmates,” as they were called, required many fundraising efforts. The Mizpah Circle asked for help and the Lucy Alexander Memorial Circle, named in memory of one of the Augusta founders, stepped up. Over the next six decades these two circles supported the home to give these elderly women “a respite after care worn and troubled lives….” 

The story of Miss Viny Coggins is illustrative. Born in Tennessee, she lost her mother as a young child and as the oldest had to take over the responsibility of the household. Soon she came to Augusta with her widowed father and brothers because they all, including 12-year-old Viny, were able to work in the Augusta Factory. She worked for the next 68 years until her worn-out body could spin and weave no more. In that entire time she had only one vacation. With no living family members, she came to the Mary Warren Home, undoubtedly the nicest place she had ever lived. Certainly the teas, holiday dinners, and occasional outings were welcomed luxuries after a life without amenities. Her room was brightened by pots of geraniums and her hands stayed busy knitting complex patterns in lace, which she sold to earn a bit of money. In her bureau drawer was the purchase she had made with her savings from the mill—a black silk dress for her burial.

The original home, which could hold five women including the matron, was open to all women regardless of creed. 

By 1911 the home had sheltered 23 women and 20 names filled the waiting list. Seeing the great need, the Daughters’ fundraising efforts for a larger home began in earnest. For the next three years the directors worked to find a suitable place. Various proposals were made including leasing space on the new MCG campus at the
former Orphan Asylum or moving onto city property at the east end of Allen Park. For a time, they considered building an extension to the current home, but new city stables across Broad Street had brought odor, flies and mosquitoes to plague the ladies. The city decided to help with the purchase of land. Finally the directors announced in August 1914 that they had acquired a “beautiful and most suitable lot” on the corner of Hickman Road and Central Avenue, right on the Monte Sano Streetcar Line. On the Hill, surrounded by trees, it would provide a pleasant and healthy environment.

With money from the sale of the old Broad Street property to Claussen’s Bakery and monies from three years of fundraising in hand, the Mizpah and Lucy Alexander Memorial Circles began work on the structure designed by prominent architect G. Lloyd Preacher. The Grand Lodge Masons ceremonially laid the cornerstone in early December; in late March the “handsome brick structure” was complete and ready for the installation of its fixtures. When the home opened for public viewing on April 13, The Augusta Chronicle praised this “Magnificent Effort of Women.”

The home looked much as it does today—two stories, broad porches, large entry hall, with the living room on one end and dining room on the other. Off the dining room was a butler’s pantry and a kitchen. Downstairs were six bedrooms on each side of the hall and upstairs another six. The first floor had an infirmary and the second included a linen room, sewing room and bathroom. Wooden beams gave character throughout. The dining room was named in honor of long-serving board president Catherine Rowland, “Miss Kate” as she was known. It boasted green velvet rugs with a china chest and a buffet filled with linen.

In addition to having a beautiful and comfortable home, the women were often treated to events and outings by local community groups—a trip to the theater, a joy ride…

The living room at the other end bore the name “Lucy Alexander Memorial Room.” Furnished with mission furniture and brown rugs, the room included portraits of Lucy Alexander and Mary Warren. A large library table held books and magazines for the enjoyment of residents and guests. Each bedroom was nicely furnished with a white iron bed, dresser, wardrobe, table and washstand. Every bedroom had been offered as a naming opportunity; all had been taken by those who wished to memorialize or honor mothers, friends or churches.

Thanks to the diligent fundraising of the King’s Daughters and the support of the community, all but $500 of the $15,000 construction cost and $3,000 furnishings had been paid by the time of the home’s opening. Augusta merchants generously provided goods and services. Five women, ranging in age from 69 to 88 moved in from the old home, along with Mrs. Thurmond, the matron, who had been with the home for more than a decade. Four new women were admitted immediately and applications were under review until the home was full. The only requirement was that the women were without resources or places to go. For those lucky enough to reside there, it was a wonderful home in the true meaning of the word. Year after year Grand Jury Presentments after annual inspections noted the contentment of the ladies there.

In addition to having a beautiful and comfortable home, the women were often treated to events and outings by local community groups—a trip to the theater at the Grand, a “joyride” provided once a year by the Rotary Club, often the first automobile ride the women had ever experienced. According to The Augusta Chronicle, on the 1916 ride, the group stopped at Hollingsworth Candy for some “souvenirs,” at Claussen’s Bakery for a treat and at Augusta Ice and Beverage where they received “tubs of ice cream” to take to the home. Over the years the “inmates” benefited from devotionals offered by various churches, performances by local groups—in World War I from Camp Hancock—Thanksgiving and Christmas dinners provided by the Daughters and many other parties and events.

Each spring the two circles of King’s Daughters had a fundraising tea. This open house quickly became one of the social events of the season as the circles went all out with flowers and wonderful edibles. Guests were asked to donate one penny for every year of their age, often bringing in hundreds of dollars.

For decades the home continued to enjoy the dedicated work of the Mizpah and Lucy Alexander Memorial Circles. In fact, their commitment to the home kept the circles going even after the King’s Daughters organization began to wane in the area. (Today Georgia has no circles.) In the early 1950s they were two of only three circles still in operation. In the early 1980s the board became a private foundation composed of descendants of members of the Mizpah and Lucy Alexander Circles who had labored so faithfully for so many years. In 1993 that board voted to close the home at the end of the year. Costs had risen and times had changed.

Now a 100-year-old lady herself, the Mary Warren Home is getting a new lease on life. This time the rooms will be filled with college students aspiring to become physicians. Currently undergoing a restoration that will meet historical certification standards, the dignified brick home will once again be part of neighborhood life. While the Monte Sano Streetcar Line no longer runs, the Georgia Regents University shuttle passes by many times each day. Surely this historic place will be a comfortable home for its new residents, as it was for the hundreds of women who found respite there for so many years.

Dr. Lee Ann Caldwell is an Augusta historian, author and director of the Center for Study of Georgia History at Augusta University. 

This article appears in the November/December 2015 issue of Augusta Magazine.

ON OCTOBER 22, the Academy of Richmond County Hall of Fame will induct 10 new members. Founded four years ago the ARC Hall of Fame recognizes alumni, teachers and coaches who have made important contributions at the local, state, national and occasionally international level.

One of this year’s inductees meets the criteria at all levels. Graduating from ARC in 1873, Pleasant Alexander Stovall held the diplomatically sensitive post of U.S. ambassador to Switzerland in the era of World War I. His story began more than five decades earlier in downtown Augusta.

Born on July 7, 1857, to Bolling Anthony and Mattie Wilson Stovall, Pleasant Alexander bore the first name of his paternal grandfather Pleasant Augustus and as his middle name that of his maternal grandfather Alexander Wilson, a Presbyterian missionary to Africa. Bolling Anthony was the fourth son of wealthy Hancock County planter Pleasant, but was reared in Augusta after his father became a merchant there. Bolling graduated from the Academy of Richmond County and University of Georgia, where he trained to be a civil engineer. After practicing that profession for a number of years he returned to Augusta to enter his father’s wholesale grocery, Stovall & McLaughlin. In 1856 he married Martha Wilson and the following year their son Pleasant was born. υ

When Pleasant was not quite four years old, the American Civil War began. His father joined the Richmond Hussars headed for Virginia. Like his friend Tommy Wilson, he witnessed the realities of war at a young age, especially after Augusta became a hospital area following the Battles of Chickamauga and Atlanta. After the war, along with Tommy Wilson, Pleasant attended the private school for boys described by teacher Joseph Derry as offering a “select classical education on the banks of the Savannah River.” A Wilson biographer wrote that “as lads [Stovall and Wilson] rode through the streets and suburbs of Augusta…including to the Sand Hills on horseback.” 

The boys were also members of the Lightfoot Baseball Club, which would later produce a U.S. President, a justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, a U.S. ambassador and a dean of the Columbia University School of Law. While his boyhood playmate Wilson moved to Columbia in 1870, Stovall entered the Academy of Richmond County on Telfair Street as his father had years earlier and, like his father, attended and graduated from University of Georgia. Returning home to become associate editor of The Augusta Chronicle, Stovall honed his skills in journalism under the mentoring of editor Patrick Walsh. In January 1885 he married Mary Adams Ganahl, daughter of eminent Augusta attorney and member of the board of education Joseph Ganahl and his wife Harriet Adams. The couple moved to Summerville not far from the home of Mary’s parents.

Stovall became active in the life of the community, belonging to the Masons and the Hayne Literary Society, which he served as president in 1888. In 1891 the governor appointed him to the board of trustees of his alma mater University of Georgia. He became a popular speaker for organizations and community events and his editorials and essays were widely read, confirming his reputation as a “graceful and fluent writer.”

In March 1891 Stovall and Walsh were both invited to speak at the anniversary banquet of the Hibernian Society in Savannah. At the time Savannah had no evening newspaper, a gap Stovall decided to fill by founding the Savannah Evening Press. Even after the family’s move to Savannah, the Stovalls and their three children—daughters Sarah Adams (Sada) and Pleasant, and son Joseph Ganahl—remained closely connected to Augusta with frequent and long visits.

If he had wanted, Pleasant Stovall could have had a very successful political career in state and national office. He became interested and active in politics in the 1890s, and in 1892 he served as chair of the state Democratic Convention in Atlanta. By the early 1900s newspapers throughout the state, including The Augusta Chronicle, often called for him to run for U.S. Congress. Savannah sent him to the state legislature from 1902 to 1906 where early in his tenure he introduced a bill that would have made primary elections legal elections in the same sense as general elections. He also served on the Chatham County Board of Education. In 1911 support grew for Stovall to be elected by the state legislature to represent Georgia in the U.S. Senate. Instead he went back to the state legislature in 1912.

In the presidential race that year, Stovall was an early supporter of his boyhood friend, then New Jersey governor Woodrow Wilson, for the Democratic nomination. He waged “a strong and dignified campaign for him.” In 1913 Stovall resigned his seat in the Georgia legislature when President Woodrow Wilson nominated him as the U.S. ambassador to Switzerland with enthusiastic support from Georgia’s congressional delegation. He did not know when he accepted the post that he would hold such a strategically important position during a major world conflict.

When war broke out in August 1914, Stovall and the American consuls in Switzerland worked diligently to aid the Americans in the country, estimated at more than 10,000. In August 1914, Secretary of State William Jennings Bryan, who had stayed in the Stovalls’ Savannah home two years earlier, notified Stovall that $50,000 in gold had been deposited in a New York bank to be credited to him by the Swiss International Bank for the purpose of getting Americans home via Italian ports.

His post was a sensitive one. Switzerland was a neutral nation surrounded by countries at war. As the U.S. ambassador there, Stovall was very successful in his duties while managing to maintain the neutrality of his post and working hard to help refugees. He also appealed for funds for facilities for Swiss soldiers stationed in defensive posts on their country’s borders.

These duties were not without danger. In November of 1914 Mary and young Miss Pleasant Stovall returned to the states for an extended visit over the holidays, going and coming through Italy. Although the U.S. was not yet in the war, German U-boats plied the Atlantic and only three months after their return trip Germans sank the liner Lusitania. In September 1917, six months after the U.S. declaration of war, Stovall returned to Washington to discuss various sensitive matters with the U.S. government. During that trip, he also visited Georgia, including his Augusta home where his old classmates entertained him with a dinner at the Augusta Country Club before he returned to his post through the dangerous waters of the Atlantic.

 During and after the war, the Swiss praised him for his kindness to refugees and for his compassion for many permanently incapacitated soldiers of the warring nations who were allowed to come to Switzerland. An editorial in 1917 lauded some of his virtues: “hardworking…without fear…thorough…fair…an active mind…”

It was a joyous day on December 1, 1918, when 156 American officer and non-commissioned officer POWs were released by Germany to Switzerland. While the train carrying them was met in Zurich by enthusiastic crowds, the welcome at Berne, where they were met by Pleasant and Mary Stovall, “surpassed almost anything of this kind seen in Switzerland since the war began…the train halted for hours while the Americans were showered with delicacies they were unable to get in imprisonment.” The Stovalls hosted an impromptu reception, with the ambassador personally shaking hands with as many of the Americans as possible.

After the war, a letter in the Washington Times described the significance of the post stating: “In the center of all the war activity little Switzerland sat in the saddle holding the most important position.”  The U.S. had sent the right man for the job, for while all nations were represented by competent men, no diplomat had “so vital and supreme a commission as that modest and tactful diplomat who had in his care the interests of the American nation…surrounded by spies, hazardous risks, terror and plunder, this fine scholarly Georgian was ever alert to his country’s need.” Stovall would eventually compile his essays on the war into Switzerland and the World War.

Throughout the war, wife Mary and daughter Pleasant were by his side. Young Miss Pleasant’s sojourn in Switzerland was life-changing, for there she met the secretary of the British legation in Berne, Robert Leslie Craigie. On October 30, 1918, just two weeks before the armistice, the two were married in the English church there. Like his father-in-law, Robert Craigie would prove to be an able diplomat, in 1937 becoming Britain’s ambassador to Japan. By that time he was Sir Robert Craigie and his wife Lady Pleasant Stovall Craigie. The Craigies and son Robert Alexander Pleasant were in Tokyo when the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor and spent seven months interned in the embassy compound. In August 1942 news came to Augusta via the Red Cross that the Craigies were safe and being repatriated.

After six-and-a-half years in the stressful Berne post, Pleasant Stovall returned home in 1920 as a vocal supporter of the Treaty of Versailles and League of Nations. Before he ever reached American soil, he was being touted as a potential candidate for the governorship by some, while others said he should run for the U.S. Senate. While Stovall did not seek office himself, he chaired the Georgia delegation to the Democratic convention in 1920. Four years later he was in the state’s delegation to the New York Democratic National Convention. 

Throughout the 1920s Stovall remained at his editorial desk, although he and Mary travelled often to visit Pleasant in England. Once again he became a popular speaker, especially in his hometown. Although only 20 students were graduating from the Medical College of Georgia in 1921, the Grand Opera House was overflowing to hear Stovall deliver the commencement address. His alma mater UGA awarded him an honorary doctorate of law in 1922, the same year the Belgian Parliament ordered a special medal to be struck for his general war relief efforts, but especially for his service on behalf of Belgian POWs. He remained active in the early ’30s, still serving as editor and in 1932-1933 as chair of the Georgia Bicentennial Commission. He also became an ardent supporter of Franklin D. Roosevelt and the New Deal.

Pleasant and Mary Stovall celebrated their 50th wedding anniversary in January 1935. Four months later, on May 13, Pleasant spent the day at the newspaper writing editorials; the next day he died suddenly. Even though he had lived so many years in Savannah, his family brought him to Augusta to rest in Summerville Cemetery just one block from the home where he and Mary had begun their married life. Tributes poured in from around the country, including one from the president of the United States. He was 77 years old and had enjoyed a remarkable life, leaving behind a legacy as a “quiet, kindly man, an able editor, a great citizen.” The recognition by the ARC Hall of Fame is well-deserved.

The Academy of Richmond County Hall  Fame’s fourth annual induction banquet will be held on Thursday, October 22, at 6 p.m. at First Baptist Church, Augusta. In addition to Pleasant Alexander Stovall, the 2015-16 inductees include Coach Langston Bolton, Beverly Dolan, Lawton B. Evans, Elbert McGran, Jackson, Retired U.S. Air Force pilot Colonel Derwent Langley, Federal Judge C. Ashley Royal, Retired Major General Leroy Suddath, Dr. Pat Scannon and Jim Whitehead. For information on tickets contact Richmond Academy.   

Dr. Lee Ann Caldwell is an Augusta historian, author and director of the Center for Study of Georgia History at Georgia Regents University-Augusta.             

This article appears in the October 2015 issue of Augusta Magazine.

AS GEORGIA and its 12 sister states gloried in their hard-won independence in the mid-1780s, Augusta was the southwestern frontier of the United States. New settlers poured into Georgia’s piedmont over the next decade, making Augusta the hub of the expanding backcountry. The history of Augusta during the early years of the nation is a story of transition from a rugged frontier society to a more refined town.

From 1786 through 1795 Augusta served as capital of the state, a reflection of the shift of power from the coast to the burgeoning interior. By the mid-1780s weekly stage coaches carried people and mail between Augusta and Savannah and Augusta and Washington, connecting to both the coast and interior. In 1790, commerce with South Carolina had increased so greatly that Wade Hampton built a toll bridge across the river from the Carolina shore to Center (5th) Street. υ

As state capital, Augusta was the site of the most significant political events in the state’s early history. In 1787, Georgia gladly sent representatives to the convention being held in Philadelphia to revise the central government. A stronger central government, leaders reasoned, would be able to help negotiate the removal of the Creeks and Cherokee even further westward, opening more new territory for land-hungry migrants. When the completed Constitution arrived in Georgia that autumn, a convention met in the capital city to consider its ratification. On January 4, 1788, Georgia enthusiastically became the fourth state to join the new union. According to the newspaper, “as the last name was signed to the Ratification, a party of Colonel Armstrong’s regiment…proclaimed the joyful tidings opposite the State-House by thirteen discharges from two pieces of artillery.” 

In 1789 electors met in Augusta at the “Coffee-House” to cast their votes unanimously for the revolutionary hero and widely-respected George Washington for president of the United States. Following the announcement of Washington’s election, the militia “immediately discharged thirteen rounds from two brass field pieces in honor of their beloved general, and eleven rounds as a compliment to those Federal States who had adopted the new Constitution.” Georgia’s own new Constitution of 1789, modeled on the federal constitution, was written in Augusta. Governor George Walton and members of the ratifying convention celebrated its ratification by drinking wine to its prosperity.

Ordinances made drunkenness, swearing…and biting and eye gouging illegal.

The ordinances passed by the town’s early governing bodies give insight into some of the problems the community faced and the attempt of those governing to bring order to a society that still had much of the frontier. They set the early speed limit—no galloping horses. They prohibited firing guns in town, throwing dead animals in the street, allowing hogs to run wild. Ordinances made drunkenness, profane swearing, and biting and eye gouging illegal. Grand juries publicly named citizens who violated proper behavior or civic duty, which included keeping the pathways that were the roads clear in front of their property. The penalties for lawbreaking could be severe. Upon the first conviction for biting or eye gouging, the guilty had to pay a $100 fine and spend two hours in the pillory. If unable to pay, the convicted received 100 lashes in lieu of the fine. For horse stealing a first offender sat in the pillory for four hours, was imprisoned for a time decided by the court, was publicly whipped on the bare back for 39 lashes at each of three public whippings and branded on the shoulder. The second offense for the above crimes brought death.

Throughout these years, Augusta was the center of commerce for the fast-growing interior of the state. Liberal land grants transformed the demography of the area as Virginians and Carolinians moved in, bringing with them the cultivation of that lucrative crop they had always planted—tobacco. The crop came to Augusta from outlying farms in hogsheads. Turned on their sides with an axle through the middle attached to a horse or oxen, these barrels could be rolled to market along paths that followed the high ground to keep the leaves dry. The resulting tobacco roads seemed to meander aimlessly to the valley. Farmers also used the Savannah River as a highway, with barges and Petersburg boats filled high with their crops.

 People from the town and the countryside helped Augusta realize the prediction of leading citizen George Walton that the town would be the “great center of commerce.” Tradesmen, some migrants from the North or from Europe, claimed to have the “latest fashions.” Dry goods merchants sold a variety of products including cloth, salt, iron, steel, molasses, window glass, spices, cheeses and usually a sampling of “spirituous liquors” such as “Jamaican spirits,” brandy, port, gin and “coniac.” Of particular appeal to Augusta’s emerging elite were European goods such as the “elegant silks, satins, variety of feathers, lace, ribbons and gloves…” that Robert Forsyth advertised in 1787. Specialty shops testified to the town’s growing refinement. Augustans supported tailors and habit makers (women’s clothing), a watchmaker from Paris, distillers and brewers, hat makers, tanners, bakers and furniture craftsmen. Mr. James Stallings sold frame houses ready for delivery.         Augustans offered professional services as well. Many lawyers practiced in the community and participated in local politics. In 1789 Drs. Dysart and Payne assured the public that they had prepared themselves for the “extensive practice of Physic & Surgery.” Dysart also sold an assortment of medicines, many of them spices. James Lauder, at his medicine store on Broad Street, provided practitioners with medicines including red bark, Epsom, gum camphor, cream of tartar, opium and ammoniac. That same year dentist Dr. T. Steele presciently advertised that he could “cure scurvy of the teeth by removing an infectious tartar that destroys the enamel of the teeth, and will force them out of their sockets if not removed.”

In addition to their concern for goods and services, Augustans showed an early zeal for the development of the minds of their citizens, at least those males who would likely become leaders. In 1783, the  Georgia General Assembly had passed a law to use public lands to secure income for institutions of learning in the towns of the state. In Augusta, the same trustees who oversaw the common church also had the authority to run the academy. They chose the professors and designed the curriculum. The academy provided a classical education for young men, including Latin, English grammar, mathematics, spelling, geography and rhetoric. Students demonstrated their mastery of the curriculum with oral examinations attended by the town’s top leaders as well as the interested public. The exams must have been especially unnerving in 1791 when President George Washington, on a visit to Georgia as part of his Southern tour, was one of the guests. 

Private schools and specialized classes offered instructions in a variety of disciplines and skills. In 1786 P.J.J. Wuchters announced the opening of his French school, saying he used a teaching method that would “facilitate progress more expeditiously” in learning to read, speak and write “that polished and polite language.” While women were considered too fragile of mind for the rigors of Latin, the polite French was less demanding and therefore acceptable. Augustans could also learn bookkeeping, astronomy, navigation and surveying. Professor Chandler’s evening school taught all the above courses plus use of globes, “mensuration” (measurements), algebra and trigonometry. Mr. Charles Chevalier offered a school for fencing and dancing. Within a year, William Spencer also operated a dancing school. Claude Simon, one of the community’s cultural organizers, taught harpsichord, violin, flute, guitar and clarinet.

To further the pursuit of knowledge, Augusta founded the Library Society and an Academic Society in the late 1780s. The Academic Society invited the public, including ladies, to hear debates on current issues of interest including serious topics, such as “Is it consistent with the policy of the American Republic to establish a navy?” to more superfluous topics: “Which is the most desirable, a very beautiful and accomplished young lady with a small or no fortune or one of ordinary person, good sense, large fortune and advanced in years?”

Many civic organizations and cultural events provided opportunities for both service and entertainment. These reflect the growing desire for sophistication and culture, or as the Dramatic Society stated in its purpose, “a thorough annihilation of native rusticity, refinement of manners, and cultivation of taste.” By the late 1780s Augustans could attend concerts, the theater and fancy balls. Mr. Claude Simon often provided the musical entertainment at concerts held at Emanuel Wambersie’s, whose home was a cultural and civic center. The theater company featured an actress named Wall who was the “sweetest syren of the Augusta stage.” The popular sport was horse racing. The Augusta Jockey Club organized and advertised the races every November. The December 1787 race announcement said that “those gentlemen who were fortunate enough to win the race” gave an elegant ball with dancing followed by a supper.

The Jockey Club was only one of many to which men belonged. The Society of the Cincinnati, the organization of the officer veterans of the Revolutionary War, had a local group. The Mechanics Society of Augusta served to “place their craft on a more respectable and social footing.” Artisans such as coach makers, blacksmiths, tanners, coopers, carpenters, shoemakers, silversmiths and others could join. Like their more elite counterparts, they celebrated the various festival days. William Longstreet, who had invented a steam engine, became the best known member, being elected as an alderman in 1792 and state legislator in 1794. Augusta also had lodges of Masons. Fox’s Tavern, Thompson’s Tavern and others were popular meeting places for many of these civic organizations.

Throughout the year were many days of celebration: Washington’s birthday, St. Patrick’s Day, St. Tammany’s Day, St. John’s Day and the Fourth of July. To honor both their sacred and secular heroes, citizens paraded, drank toasts, fired cannons and fireworks, and danced. On a typical St. Tammany’s Day, the 1789 celebration began on the Savannah River with the election of George Walton as “Chief Sachem” and other leaders as “Counsellors and Warriors.” After establishing law in a wigwam, the group enjoyed a dinner at three in the afternoon. The St. John the Baptist celebration by the Lodge Columbia of the ancient York Masons met at the coffee house at 10 a.m., processed “properly cloathed, the officers in the jewels of the lodge,” to the academy to hear a sermon “suitable for the occasion” and had dinner at the home of “Brother” Wambersie.

The July 4th celebration usually involved not only discharges of artillery, but barbecues. In 1788 the governor also gave a ball with “one of the largest and most brilliant assemblies ever seen.” At this occasion the governor and Mrs. Noel, wife of a prominent local attorney, opened the dancing with a minuet. The next year’s celebration began with pealing church bells at 11, followed by a church service for the governor and council, a midday meal at 3 p.m. at the coffee house including 13 toasts, while in the evening a grand display of fireworks dazzled the community.

By the 1790s Augusta was a bustling town with more than 250 houses and a population of over 1,100. It boasted many public buildings including a common church, an academy with almost 100 students, a state house, three warehouses for tobacco and a jail. Goods and services of all kinds made it a destination for the inhabitants of the entire backcountry. Arts and civic organizations provided the amenities of a settled society. The frontier was moving westward. In 1796 the political capital moved further inland to Louisville, but Augusta continued to thrive and expand as an economic and cultural capital of Georgia.

Dr. Lee Ann Caldwell is an Augusta historian, author and director of the Center for Study of Georgia History at Georgia Regents University-Augusta. 

This article appears in the June/July 2015 issue of Augusta Magazine.

Fire on the mountains—
snakes in the grass.
Satan’s here a-billin;—
oh, Lordy, let him pass!

— Portion of the poem The Mountain
Whippoorwill by Stephen Vincent Benet,
which was the inspiration for Charlie Daniel’s
song “The Devil Went Down to Georgia”

MANY HAVE ENJOYED Charlie Daniel’s incredible fiddling in “The Devil Went Down to Georgia” or the movie musical Seven Brides for Seven Brothers, but may not have known that both had an Augusta connection—they were inspired by the work of poet and author Stephen Vincent Benet. 

The talented Benet, although not a native Augustan, spent his coming-of-age high school years living in the building that now bears the Benet name on the Summerville campus of Georgia Regents University. There he wrote his first published verses and there he learned about the American South firsthand. 

The first Stephen Vincent Benet in America was the son of Spanish immigrant Peter Benet who settled in St. Augustine, Fla., when it was still Spanish territory. He was born there in 1827, only eight years after the Adams-Onis treaty, negotiated by Augustan John Forsyth, made Florida a territory of the United States. He attended University of Georgia before becoming the first Floridian to get an appointment to West Point after Florida’s admission to the Union as a state in 1845. Following graduation from the academy, he became a career army officer and, in spite of his Southern birth, a loyal Union soldier in the Civil War. By the time of his retirement, Stephen Vincent Benet was a brigadier general. 

He and his wife Laura Walker had two sons—Laurence Vincent, who graduated from Yale and also became an executive in ordnance with the Hotchkiss Company, and James Walker, who followed in his father’s footsteps, graduating from West Point and spending a career in the U.S. Army. 

Born in 1898 in Bethlehem, Penn., to Colonel J. Walker Benet and his wife Frances Neill Rose, the second Stephen Vincent was the youngest of three remarkably talented children. Sister Laura became a successful writer. Brother William Rose, who won a Pulitzer Prize in poetry in 1942 for his The Dust Which Is God, was best known as a critic and editor, and one of the founders of the Saturday Review of Literature. Twelve years after the birth of William Rose came the third child, named for his paternal grandfather. He too inherited the family love of reading and talent for writing. He asked for a typewriter for his sixth birthday.

The Benets moved often during Stephen’s childhood—to the arsenal in Watervliet, N.Y., in 1899, Rock Island, Ill., in 1904, and Benecia, Calif., in 1905. Stephen Benet loved California, but in 1911 his father received command of the arsenal at Augusta, Ga., the most significant post in the Southeast. Thirteen-year-old Stephen, now the only child remaining at home, was not eager to move to Augusta from beautiful California. His years in Augusta, however, would prove important to his writing throughout his career, bringing him an understanding of the South crucial to some of his best work. 

The young boy was surrounded by history. The Augusta Arsenal his father commanded had been built in the mid-1820s on land purchased by the U.S. government from planter Freeman Walker, a U.S. Senator during the Missouri Compromise debates in 1819-1820. The main buildings had been deconstructed at the 1819 arsenal on the Savannah River closer to town and reconstructed a couple of miles away in Summerville on the “Hill.” In 1861, in front of the building next to the commandant’s house, the Arsenal had been surrendered by a predecessor of his father’s to the Georgia Confederate troops at the demand of Georgia Governor Joseph E. Brown. During the war, the Arsenal and the Confederate Powder Works, built near the site of the original Arsenal between the 1845 Augusta Canal and the river, churned out munitions and gunpowder for the Confederacy. 

In the Benets’ time buildings constructed by the Confederates were still in use on the Arsenal grounds and the tall chimney of the powderworks still stood, reflected in the waters of the canal. Benet heard stories of the Civil War in the book-lined parlor of his home, told by the older ladies of the Hill whom his mother entertained with tea. On the grounds near their home were two cemeteries: the easily recognizable stones of soldiers in the Arsenal cemetery and,  in the adjoining acre, the more ornate monuments of the Walker family, including that of Confederate General W.H.T. Walker who had been killed in Sherman’s 1864 Atlanta Campaign. Although by the time the Benets arrived, the neighborhood, with its grand resort hotels the Bon Air and Partridge Inn, played host to Northern winter colonists every “season.” The history and culture of the South still infused the place and Stephen soaked it in.

History, including the history of the Civil War, became a passion of the young man. Benet attended the Summerville Academy a block from the Arsenal’s guardhouse entrance, where he found the life of a coed school more enjoyable than that of his military academy in California. Under the large oaks on the Arsenal grounds near the commandant’s home, Benet composed his verse. Pounded out on his Underwood typewriter (now housed in Special Collections at GRU), his first poems were accepted for publication during his Summerville Academy years. 

He wrote older brother Bill in 1915 to congratulate him on the birth of his daughter and to share his own good news: “The New Republic paid me fifteen (Count ’em, FIFTEEN) luscious dollars for Icarus [Winged Man]. I feel terribly cocky…An uncle of a niece. The possessor of fifteen dollars. What more could anybody want?” 

By the time he graduated in 1915 from Summerville Academy, he had received word that his book of poems entitled Five Men and Pompey would be published by a Boston company. The Augusta Chronicle wrote in December 1915, “If Mr. Benet can write, in his freshman year at college, such undeniable evidence of literary and artistic genius his friends here can sagely predict that the day will come when his name, as poet and writer, will be well known throughout the country, and his Augusta friends will watch his career with interest and pride.” It was prophetic. In 1917 Yale Alumni Weekly announced “the Albert Stanburrough Cook Prize in poetry had been awarded to Stephen Vincent Benet of Augusta, Ga.” And for over almost three decades Augusta followed the rise of Benet in the literary world. 

In the fall of 1915, while his parents remained in Augusta, the young man went off to Yale. He was in good literary company; classmates included Thornton Wilder and Archibald MacLeish, both future Pulitzer winners as well. While at Yale Benet published two volumes of verses and in his third year was elected the chair of theYale Literary Magazine. After this year, he tried to join the service in WWI, memorizing the eye chart to pass the eyesight test. Within days, his vision difficulty became obvious and he was honorably mustered out. 

After completing his bachelor’s degree he went into the Yale master’s program, acquiring a degree in 1921. In Paris on a Yale fellowship in 1920-21, he met and married his soul mate Rosemary Carr, who was working as a journalist for the Chicago Tribune. For two decades she served as his muse. Less than a year after his marriage the Nation magazine published his poem “Poor Whipporwill or How Hill Billy Jim Won the Great Fiddler’s Prize,” the story of a Georgia mountain boy who could “fiddle down a possum from a mile high tree.” Georgia was still on his mind.

The crucial point in Benet’s career was receiving a Guggenheim fellowship in 1926, which allowed him to concentrate on his writing. He and Rosemary returned to Paris where living expenses were cheaper and for two years he meticulously researched and wrote what became his magnum opus, John Brown’s Body. In its first two years in print, the 15,000-line book poem sold more than 130,000 copies and in 1929 won the Pulitzer for poetry. John Brown’s Body is Civil War history in verse with accurate portrayals of the main players based on Benet’s research, combined with fictional stories of planters, farmers, soldiers, abolitionists and enslaved African Americans, to reflect the lives of ordinary Northerners and Southerners in the tragic conflict. Benet tried to capture the views of both sides without judgment. While The Augusta Chronicle would have preferred a more Southern bias, it nonetheless agreed that winning the Pulitzer was a “Notable distinction, regardless of what some folks may think about [the poem].” 

Benet’s time in Georgia clearly influenced the poem, the Georgia “…of pine and river and sleepy air, of summer thunder and winter rain….” His main fictional protagonist, planter Clay Wingate, knows this is “his Georgia,” that “wherever the winds of Georgia run, It smells of peaches long in the sun.” Benet was flooded with letters from all over the country testifying to the effect the book had on its readers. Students studied it in their classrooms. In England the BBC produced it. Soldiers read it during World War II. As his biographer Charles Fenton wrote, “It made [Benet] a national figure at the age of thirty, known to thousands of Americans who knew the name of no other living American poet.”

Benet continued to produce poems, novels, essays and short stories. By the early 1930s, he had begun work on another narrative poem, Western Star, that was to explore the history of the United States from settlement through the westward movement. But other projects, including his 1934 novel James Shore’s Daughter and his best-known short story, the O. Henry Award-winning “The Devil and Daniel Webster,” intervened. Over the years that story appeared in various forms—as a play, an operetta and a movie—and generations of schoolchildren read it. It solidified his reputation as an American storyteller. 

In the late 1930s Benet tried to get back to the work on his narrative poem. He spent the last summers of the decade researching the history of American settlement. However, in addition to the distractions of lecturing, editing, mentoring, working with literary organizations and writing short stories to support the family, Benet’s enthusiastic patriotism propelled him to spend much of his time conscientiously supporting Roosevelt in the mobilization efforts of World War II. The Benets, after all, were army folks. The day after the 1940 presidential election, well-known American actor Raymond Massey read Benet’s “We Stand United” speech on radio, which was enthusiastically received around the country. He also composed a portion of “Freedom From Fear” in President Franklin Roosevelt’s “Four Freedoms” speech. He wrote radio scripts for the Council for Democracy, including a series in 1942 entitled Dear Adolf in which each of six broadcasts in the series was a fictional letter from various stereotypical Americans—a farmer, housewife, soldier, worker, naturalized citizen. All monies received for war work Benet sent directly to the Army Fund or USO. 

Through his writing Benet was devoted to morale on the home front, though he longed to finish his narrative poem of America’s founding. Unfortunately, it was not to be. Overworked and long wracked by arthritis and poor health, Benet died of a heart attack in his wife’ s arms on March 13, 1943—he was 44 years old. A few months later, Western Star was published, one book of the proposed nine. It won Benet’s second Pulitzer. 

By that time Augusta was more than 25 years in his past, but its subtle influences remained. These were his only years in the South, yet they set the stage for his work, influenced the content and permeated the imagery in much of his best work. In a 1936 letter to author Margaret Mitchell, Benet wrote: “We were eight years in Augusta when I was growing up and I can still shut my eyes and remember the particular look of that country. I hated it at first…and then grew very fond of it indeed…I still remember reading…at night in the middle of a typical Georgia thunderstorm. My!” φ

Dr. Lee Ann Caldwell is an Augusta historian, author and director of the Center for Study of Georgia History at Georgia Regents University-Augusta.       

When the reverent David Floyd died on October 9, 1900, the newspaper wrote that it was “one of the largest funerals of a colored person every witnessed.” In spite of a downpour that continued through the afternoon, there was not a vacant seat in Trinity Christian (then Colored) Methodist Church and many stood in the yard in the rain. Eulogists included the well-known newspaper editor Rev. William J. White and CME Bishop R. S. Williams, while professor A. R. Johnson served as usher. Floyd was a “man who was known, honored and esteemed by the entire community, both black and white….” Twenty-three years later even grander accolades were given to his son Silas Xavier upon his death.

 David Floyd was born in 1829 in Sandersville, Ga., probably enslaved, since neither he nor his wife Sarah Jane appear in the antebellum censuses. Together they created a strong family; at David’s death they had been married 46 years and had seven children. Silas entered the world in 1869. The Floyds had migrated to Augusta after emancipation and lived in the area known today as Old Town. The rigid Jim Crow laws had not set in yet and the neighborhood was still a racial and class mix.

Floyd neighbors included the bi-racial Ladavese family and the white Berry Benson family. For more than 20 years David worked as a coachman/porter for John Davidson, the “father of education in Augusta.” He also earned money for his family in other ways. In his memoirs, Ancient Days in Augusta, neighbor Charles Benson wrote that David Floyd “had a fine vegetable garden and was our gardener…with [his] talents we had one of the finest vegetable and flower gardens in town.” David also cut wood for the Bensons at 50 cents per cord at a time when a day’s wage was 50 cents.

Thanks to his own diligence and intelligence, but also to the help of his brothers, Silas Floyd attended and graduated from Atlanta University.

David Floyd became a minister known for his piety and benevolence. He preached regularly at Macedonia, Thankful and Springfield Baptist churches, but also at Trinity and Rock of Ages CME churches, as well as Bethel AME and Christ Presbyterian, often for evening services and/or filling the morning pulpit for absent ministers. The frequency of his work speaks to his talents as an orator.

Following David’s example, all of the Floyd sons became hard-working and successful within the restricted parameters of the society in which they lived. Three migrated North—Richard and Frank to Boston, and David to Springfield, Mass. But sons Charles and Silas stayed in the South. Thanks to his own diligence and intelligence, but also to the help of his brothers, Silas went to college. As Benson wrote in his Memoirs, “one of his [David’s] sons was a Bellman porter and another worked in Boston and between them they educated Silas for the ministry, so that afterwards he became Augusta’s most respected colored citizen.”

The life of his father became a model for this son. While in school Silas worked as a newsboy and a boot black. Every Sunday when he delivered the paper to merchant J. B. White, the young man also shined his shoes. Silas Xavier Floyd first appears in The Augusta Chronicle in 1883 as an active member of the YMCA; as part of that work and he and two other young men were holding religious services at the jail, a foreshadowing of his lifelong devotion to service. Two years later, although he was still a year from graduating, young Silas gave a speech at the commencement exercises of Ware High School, the public high school for blacks founded in 1880. The next year he delivered the valedictory address and was given a prize in recognition of his outstanding work by Superintendent Lawton B. Evans. He received his diploma from the hands of John Davidson, president of the board of education, who must have been proud of his porter’s son. From there he attended and graduated from Atlanta University.

In 1901, Silas wed the widow Ella Drayton James, a seamstress who had married barber Owen C. James in 1883 and was raising her only child, Marietta. Born in South Carolina, Ella and her sisters came to Augusta where Ella, Katie and Henrietta remained, while Mary married a sea captain out of Jacksonville, Fla. Their daughter Nora married another Jacksonville native, the great composer of the Harlem Renaissance J. Rosamond Johnson, who wrote the music that turned his brother James Weldon Johnson’s poem “Lift Every Voice and Sing” into the “Negro National Anthem.” Silas helped Ella raise her daughter Marietta to become a teacher while the two of them devoted their lives to others.

When Ella and Silas married, he was already on the way to making a strong reputation for himself and becoming one of the most respected members of the community. As the more fluid race relations of the 1880s gave way to the rigid Jim Crow laws that defined American segregation, Silas Floyd and his friend and colleague the Reverend Charles T. Walker became the unofficial liaisons between the races in Augusta for more than two decades.

Floyd and his friend and colleague, the Rev. Charles T. Walker, became the unofficial liaisons between the races in Augusta for over two decades.

 By the turn of the century Floyd had taught for several years and edited the African American newspaper The Augusta Sentinel, had taken three years to serve as a field worker throughout the South for the International Sunday School Convention and had returned to pastor Tabernacle Baptist Church during the time Charles T. Walker served a major church in New York City. On January 29, 1900, the newspaper announced: “Noted Young Colored Divine Preaches Strong Sermon.” Crowds had to be turned away, but he told those gathered that no real success in life came without following the Golden Rule; no worthy achievement “is out of line with the Sermon on the Mount.” These became themes in his life.

By 1902 he was gaining fame not only as a teacher/preacher/lecturer, but also as a writer. That May the American Baptist Publication Society of Philadelphia published two Floyd books: The Gospel of Service andOther Sermons—the first book of sermons by an African American the APBS had ever published—and The Life of Reverend Charles T. Walker DD, a biography of his colleague published by National Baptist Publishing Board in Nashville, Tenn. His poetry and articles were also appearing in journals and magazines, including the national literary publication Lippincott’s, where he was in the company of such literary giants as Willa Cather, Rudyard Kipling and Oscar Wilde. In 1905 his book of didactic stories for African American children, Floyd’s Flowers, came out for the first time. (It was reprinted in 1920, 1922 and 1925.) According to his introduction, he wrote “with the hope that many young minds may be elevated by means of these stories and many hearts filled with high and holy aspirations.”

In 1902 the American Academy of Political and Social Sciences, whose members included presidents and professors of Ivy League institutions, elected Silas Floyd as a member. He was the fourth black chosen, following Booker T. Washington, Major Richard R. Wright and Dr. W.E.B DuBois. Calling Floyd the “Paul Lawrence Dunbar of the South,” The Augusta Chronicle wrote, “It is matter of pardonable pride that an Augusta colored man is able to find himself quoted almost every month in literary magazines.” Floyd himself, however, was quite humble.

 Floyd’s theme in most of his writings was servant leadership. He found, he wrote, “too much selfishness in our conception of salvation.” Instead he argued that all should be concerned less with themselves and more with others. “Physician, drayman, lawyer, teacher, governor, president, banker, farmer, carpenter, cook, merchant, preacher, railroad president…no matter how lofty, no matter how humble, all are called to serve God and humanity.”

He walked his talk. Floyd was generous with his resources making donations not only to many African American community organizations, but also to fundraisers as diverse as the Butt Memorial Association, the American Red Cross and Armenian relief. But significantly, he was also generous with his time, knowledge and talents. Over the years, he was an active speaker for and officer of the Colored YMCA and the board of the Shiloh Orphanage. In August 1908 he joined with other leaders to incorporate the Negro Fair Association, not just for entertainment but to showcase the accomplishments of African Americans. He was treasurer of the Colored Committee of the Flood Relief fund in 1908 and again in 1912. On March 12 of that year, Floyd and C. T. Walker provisioned 43 families. Floyd chaired the Committee of Public Welfare to distribute relief to the African American community after the devastating fire of 1916. In World War I he was chair for the Richmond County Food Administration drive. He also accompanied black selective service men to training camps and worked on the advisory board for the draft. During the influenza epidemic of 1918-19, when the community called on teachers to answer the nursing shortage Silas Floyd was one of those faithfully on duty day and night. In October 1919 when the new City Teachers Organization was founded, the members chose Floyd as president, an office he later held nationally. When the group held their state convention in Augusta, Floyd had to advertise for members of the African American community to accommodate teachers who, because of Jim Crow laws, could not get rooms at city hotels. 

Throughout his life Floyd remained a teacher, first at the Mauge Street School and later the Gwinnett School, becoming its principal after A. R. Johnson retired in 1909. Thousands of students benefited from his careful instruction. For many years Floyd also wrote a weekly column for The Chronicle known as “Notes Among the Colored People.” It is not only a historical treasure for defining the many activities and achievements of black Augusta in the early 20th century, but it also gave Floyd a bully pulpit for trying to pressure the white community into action to help the disfranchised African American citizenry. He asked for neighborhood improvements including road paving, attention to drainage problems and street lighting. After the death of his childhood customer merchant J. B White, Floyd became a member of the committee to make suggestions on how his legacy to the city would be spent. When almost all recommendations had been for civic improvements that would affect whites only—a library and auditorium, and business education classes at night for white men and women working in the mills—Floyd pushed for city council to designate $50,000 of the $400,000 for a badly needed new grammar school in the black community.

For many years Floyd also wrote a weekly column for The Augusta Chronicle known as “Notes Among the Colored People.”

Floyd was certainly cognizant of and concerned about the injustice of Jim Crow and disfranchisement. As early as 1903 he wrote: “I know that the wrongs which are heaped upon the colored people in this country are many and grievous—discriminated against in public, even in private life. Right to vote being taken away in nearly every southern state. Lynching on the increase. Not only men, but women being burned at the stake.” But to the frustration of civil rights leaders, he feared that radical action would lead to destruction. He saw himself as a pragmatist: “White people have all the courts, all the railroads, all the newspapers, all the telegraph wires and double the men that we have. In every race riot, north and south, the poor colored man will get the worst of it ultimately.” Like Martin Luther King Jr two generations later, he believed in the moral arc of the universe. “God is not dead,” he wrote, “his chariots are not unwheeled and in swift ways they always fly to the rescue of those who are patient in well doing.” Almost 100 years ago Floyd wrote, “The trouble between blacks and whites grows out of the fact that the two races do not know each other—do not understand each other.” He hoped that understanding would lead to change.

Meanwhile, during World War I he participated in meetings that sought to encourage that change by addressing issues regarding inequality and injustice. At a 1917 meeting in Macon with more than a thousand delegates, he was one of the main speakers and supported resolutions that called for an end to lynching, for the right to vote, better wages, better schools and a chance to serve in military. Basically, the delegates warned white Georgians that if things did not get better in the South, blacks would leave. Indeed the Great Migration was already underway—Floyd himself had three brothers who had gone to the North. In another meeting in January of 1919 held at Tuskegee, Floyd addressed the audience saying,
“We have heard a great deal about making the world safe for democracy. That’s what we thought we were fighting for a little while ago; but since the armistice has been signed, we haven’t seen in this country
any very radical change in the treatment of the colored people by the whites. And I have about made up my mind that about all the democracy we colored people are going to get will be that which we make for ourselves.”

Yet, in spite of his discouragement, he continued his teaching and writing, his good works in the community and his push for improved conditions for African Americans until his death in September 1923 of a heart attack that many felt was brought on ”by going night and day never stopping.” He was in his mid-50s. 

Hundreds filed by his casket to pay their respects and between 2,500 and 3,000 people attended his funeral at Tabernacle Baptist Church. Prominent black and white Augustans paid tribute—all remarked not only on his accomplishments but on his humility. In his remarks School Superintendent Lawton B. Evans said: “The greatest monument we could build to him would be [a life] of service.” Silas X. Floyd still deserves such a monument.

Dr. Lee Ann Caldwell is an Augusta historian, author and director of the Center for Study of Georgia History at Georgia Regents University-Augusta. 

This article appears in the February/March 2015 issue of Augusta Magazine.